Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the authoring, delivery and use of interactive two or more dimensional multimedia and, particularly, three dimensional content.
Discussion of the Prior Art
It is common in the authoring art to bundle multiple media resources, and sometimes compiled script, into a single binary package. The binary package is then read and/or interpreted by software to create a graphical display and, in cases where script is included, provide interactivity and behavior.
One technology using pre-packaged media resources is the Viewpoint MTS file, which “carries binary information for VET content.” The Viewpoint MTS file is a single file containing one or more models, textures, sounds, and the like. An MTS is repeatedly referred to as a “Media Carrier File,” meaning that it is a file used to contain other files. By way of example, where an n-dimensional scene uses one LightWave™ model (.lwo file) and one Bitmap texture (.bmp file), Viewpoint Experience Technology bundles the .lwo and .bmp into a single MTS file before it is loaded into the scene.
Technologies that bundle scene content and compiled script using a scene compiler include Director3D™ by Macromedia and Walkabout Developer's Kit by Mayim Visual Solutions while Wild Tangent provides a third solution with a toolkit using a Java API and JavaScript where Java must also be compiled. As show in FIG. 1, these products require an intermediate step labeled as “Exported Binary File” in order to provide import data to a scene engine. More particularly, these products depend on logic built through proprietary scripting languages to provide content, interaction, and behavior. The code written in these scripting languages is then processed and packaged, along with media content, by a proprietary compiler. The prior art technologies are also shown in FIG. 2 where multiple sources are shown.